While proponents of physician-assisted suicide (PAS) and euthanasia insist that assisted suicide enables people to die with dignity, Dignitas infinita maintains that these practices are incompatible with the dignity of the person. This article examines these competing views of dignity. Drawing heavily on the distinction between ontological and existential dignity offered in Dignitas infinita, it maintains that assisted suicide violates ontological dignity and ignores the person’s diminished existential dignity. As a moral alternative to PAS and euthanasia, it describes dignity therapy, which can bring psychological healing to those who are suffering at the end of life through dignity-conserving and dignity-building practices.
Contemporary appeals to human dignity remain suspended above first principles. Drawing on Dignitas infinita, this article proposes a synthetic theology of human dignity in its fourfold sense: ontological, moral-operative, social, and existential. Its deepest ground lies not merely in humanity’s spiritual nature but in the unique elevation of human nature through the Hypostatic Union. From this Christological foundation flow the moral dignity of action as participation in Christ’s saving work, the social dignity of a life ordered toward supernatural charity, and the existential dignity of every human condition. Properly understood, human dignity is inseparable from sound Christology.
On August 4, 2024, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith issued Dignitas infinita (On Human Dignity). The Declaration examines the dynamics of human dignity in both theoretical and practical aspects. This essay examines the different types of human dignity outlined in the document (i.e., ontological, moral, social, and existential). It considers the pivotal centrality of conscience within the fundamental themes and overall argumentation of Dignitas infinita. Specifically, the essay reflects on the role that conscience plays within the interrelated dynamics of human nature, human freedom, and different kinds of dignity.
Although addressed only at the end of the document, digital violence stands as something of the full flourishing of all threats to the dignity of man addressed in Dignitas infinita. To the extent that our use of digital devices has reshaped our daily interactions with others and with the world as a whole, it has reshaped our understanding of man himself. The world, and man with it, can be computed, reduced to binary digits, and then communicated electronically on a screen. The danger inherent in this situation is that man loses sight of his dignity which transcends the confines of the finite world. The Church’s proclamation of the Gospel, then, offers a particularly healing word to modern man.
